You will study methods for calculating the behaviour of analogue and digital electronic circuits.  Analogue topics include Ohm's Law, Kirchhoff's Laws; voltage and current generators both ideal and practical; Thèvenin and Norton Theorems; superposition; nodal analysis, AC circuit analysis using complex numbers; while digital topics include basic logic functions, Boolean algebra, De Morgan's theorem, binary mathematics, Karnaugh maps, simplification of expressions, flip-flops, and state machines.

4 lectures per week

1 lab per week (3 hours)

None

None

Digital Electronics:

15% Digital Labs

35% Written Final Exam

Analogue Electronics:

7.5% Online Exam - Mid-term theory examination

17.5% Written Exam - Circuit design examination

7.5% Written Assignment - Group Design Project

2.5% Lab 1 Report

2.5% Lab 2 Report

10% 4 Online Tutorials

2.5% Post lecture tutorial questions

Reassessments are normally available for all courses, except those which contribute to the Honours classification.  For non Honours courses, students are offered reassessment in all or any of the components of assessment if the satisfactory (threshold) grade for the overall course is not achieved at the first attempt.  This is normally grade D3 for undergraduate students and grade C3 for postgraduate students.  Exceptionally it may not be possible to offer reassessment of some coursework items, in which case the mark achieved at the first attempt will be counted towards the final course grade.  Any such exceptions for this course are described below:

Assessed tutorials are automated and completed online with staged hints.  They are subsequently re-opened to students as revision exercises, with answers, before the final exam.  They cannot therefore be reassessed. Lab work and group design projects are based on group work or organised labs session, and these elements cannot be reassessed.

In order to obtain a threshold grade (D3) in any engineering course which includes coursework and an examination, there is a threshold requirement for each type of assessment that contributes more than 30% of the final assessment weighting.

An overall course result will be capped at E1 (i.e., below the threshold grade) if either:

■ the final exam grade is below E3 AND the final examination contributes more than 30% of the final assessment weighting; or

■ the coursework assessment combined grade is below E3 AND the combined coursework assessments contribute more than 30% of the final assessment weighting.

The aims of this course are to:

■ introduce key analogue electronic circuit analysis concepts and develop confidence in applying them to simple networks of passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors);

■ introduce key digital electronic design and analysis concepts and develop confidence in applying them to simple combinational and sequential logic circuits;

■ give practical experience of designing, building and measuring analogue circuits based on passive components, and digital circuits based on standard logic gates;

■ give practical experience of constructing electronic circuits using printed circuit boards and integrated circuits;

■ develop skills in systematic design and documentation.

By the end of this course students will be able to:

Digital electronics

■ explain the concept of the binary abstraction to analogue signals, and calculate the noise immunity (voltage) of a logic family given the voltages that define the states 0 and 1;

■ explain the concept of binary, octal and hexadecimal number systems for unsigned integers and convert between them, and to/from decimal, stating the advantages and disadvantages of each system as they apply to electronic computation and human readability;

■ explain the representation of positive and negative integers and positive and negative real numbers in binary, using two's complement where necessary, and demonstrate conversion to/from decimal, as well as explaining the source of any conversion errors and showing how to quantify it;

■ explain addition, subtraction and multiplication of signed and unsigned binary numbers and demonstrate this by calculating simple examples, including identifying overflow conditions when they arise;

■ recognise, name and describe, via truth tables and Boolean algebra, the operation of standard logic gates from their circuit symbol, including AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR, and XNOR;

■ construct a truth table from an English language statement of function of a circuit;

■ Given a truth table, write Boolean algebra in sum of products and product of sums form, explaining the advantage of each approach depending on the number of 1s or 0s in the output column;

■ use Boolean algebra and De Morgan's theorem to show how a circuit can be implemented with different gates, and in particular show how simple example circuits can be made entirely in NAND or NOR logic gates;

■ state how a NAND (or a NOR) gate can be wired up to act as a single input NOT gate;

■ state the advantage of using Karnaugh maps to minimise digital logic circuits, and demonstrate their use for circuits with up to five inputs;

■ show how to apply minimisation techniques to circuits with multiple inputs and outputs (treat circuits for each output separately, even if inputs are shared);

■ show how two cross coupled NAND gates can be used to create a primitive memory cell;

■ state the problems with a cross-coupled NAND gate memory cell and show how to improve it with additional circuitry;

■ recognise and describe the operation of Data (D), Toggle (T), Set-Reset (SR) and JK flip flops, by using circuit symbols and truth tables;

■ distinguish between positive and negative edge triggered flip flops from the circuit symbol, and state the advantage of edge-triggered systems over active-when-high (or low) logic; explain the term 'latch transparency';

■ explain the operation of state machines based on D-type flip flops and demonstrate the design of simple state machines with up to 8 states;

■ explain the difference between Mealy and Moore state machines;

■ use digital logic training boxes to build and verify basic circuit operation;

■ fault find circuits built using digital logic training boxes to correct wiring errors;

■ state the consequence of leaving an input unconnected on a digital logic training box, and how this differs from leaving a CMOS chip input unconnected (oscillation leading to radiated noise, excessive power use leading to possible damage);

■ design, analyse, implement and verify the operation of simple combinational logic circuits for addition, subtraction, and testing the equality of binary numbers, showing how to implement the functions using different types of gate via De Morgan's theorem;

■ design, analyse, implement and verify the operation of simple sequential logic circuits including oscillators, dividers, up/down counters with and without reset, and a reaction timer;

■ plot the expected output waveforms for sequential circuits, observe signal traces on an oscilloscope and compare. Identify any non-idealities in the signal and explain how this limits performance in terms of maximum clock speed;

Analogue electronics

■ describe the fundamental electrical properties of charge, current, voltage, potential, and power in terms familiar to each Engineering Discipline, and be able to translate between units of these properties;

■ define Ohm's Law and Kirchhoff's Current and Voltage Laws;

■ apply these laws to obtain unknown currents and voltages in networks of resistors, inductors, capacitors, current and voltage sources;

■ demonstrate how these laws can be applied to devise more powerful analysis tools such as Nodal Analysis;

■ calculate unknown currents and voltages in general networks through Nodal Analysis;

■ state Thévenin's and Norton's Theorems;

■ calculate the values of the Thévenin Voltage, Thévenin Resistance, Norton Current and Norton Resistance for any two port network;

■ apply Norton's and Thevenin's Theorems to the simplification of circuit analysis problems for two port networks;

■ analyse general a.c. networks using the complex representation of impedance;

■ define the fundamental properties of ideal op-amps;

■ calculate the voltage gain of common and novel amplification circuits built around ideal op-amps.

■ design circuits to meet practical challenges

■ work in a team to develop solutions to technical challenges

Students must attend the degree examination and submit at least 75% by weight of the other components of the course's summative assessment.

Students must attend the timetabled laboratory classes.